Rubin Museum of Art Parties Higher

"I'm going to float up to the top," Jeff Wallman said as he ascended the staircase of the Rubin Museum of Art Tuesday night. The Accidentals, a choral group, had just finished performing and 350 guests, dressed in black tie and "Himalayan Haute," were making their way to dinner at the museum's annual gala.

That staircase used to lead customers to the upper floors of Barneys department store, but in the five years the museum has occupied the space on West 17th Street, things have taken a spiritual turn. So you can forget about retail therapy. The collections of Himalayan art, assembled by collectors and museum founders Donald and Shelley Rubin, offer a different kind of escape.

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"If you get to know it, the art is about spirituality and soul," said Rubin Museum of Art board member Vikas Kapoor, one of the gala chairs.

Stop by this fall and you'll find Carl Jung's Red Book -- a book he hand-wrote in Latin and German, as well as illustrated. He called it a "confrontation with the unconscious." The exhibit goes along with a creative series of panels in which a WOW list of notables -- David Byrne, Cornel West, Marina Ambramovic, Billy Corgan, Charlie Kaufman, Gloria Vanderbilt, to name a few -- talk with analysts. "The Red Book Dialogues" start on October 19.

Feel like floating to the top? The Accidentals are performing at the Rubin this Friday night.